Download An emphatic auxiliary construction for emotions in Copala

An emphatic auxiliary construction for emotions in Copala Triqui
George Aaron Broadwell, [email protected]
Copala Triqui is an an Otomanguean language of Mexico, with a basic head-initial word order. Many
clauses are headed by compound verbs made up of two or three parts. Thus in (2) anó ra'á means 'touch with the
hand' and includes the noun ra'á 'hand'. (1) and (2) also illustrate the differential object marking; accusative is
optional with non-pronominal objects, but frequent for animate objects and infrequent for inanimate objects.
(1)
A’níí ta'nii Mariá
put
(2)
nee̱ rá chrúún a.
daughter Maria meat in oven decl
‘Maria's daughter puts the meat in the oven.’
C-anó ra'á
Mariá man Juán
a.
COM-touch
Maria acc
decl
Juan
‘Maria touched Juan.’
Transitive emotion and psychological predicates like 'love, hate, believe in, be upset with, be worried about' may
appear as ordinary transitives. But when when the object of such a predicate is human, it is very common for an
emphatic auxiliary construction (3, 4, 5) to appear.1 Because the construction has become somewhat
conventionalised for human objects, speakers find it hard to explain its semantics. However, when used with
inanimates (5), the auxiliary is only appropriate in emphatic contexts. Thus emphasis seems to be part of the
underlying semantics of the emotion + auxiliary construction. 2
(3) C-aran' rá
COM like
V
Diose̱ ni'ya̱j
God look´
Subj
Aux
so'
3SGM
man
ACC
Pro
Acc
Moisés (4)Nachri'
Moses
hate
Obj
'God liked (favored) Moses.'
'(5) u̱nj aran' ndo'o rá=j
I
Subj
nii
man
INDEF
ni'ya̱j
look´
INDEF
ACC
núj
we (excl)
Subj
Aux
Pro
Acc
Obj
'People hate us'
ne'e=j chra'
like much (part)=1sg
see'=1sg music
V
Aux=Pro Obj
(Adv) Part=Subj
V
nii
' I like the music very much.'
The emphatic auxiliary construction. The construction shows a number of morphosyntactic features which need to be
specified. The key element of the emphatic construction is the appearance of an auxiliary verb (glossed look' or see')
after the emotion predicate. In examples (3) and (4) above, this is the verb ni'ya̱j, which in ordinary sentences means
'look'. (5) shows the verb ne'e 'see' used as the auxiliary.3 As (5) shows, these verbs have undergone semantic
bleaching and do not have their regular semantics in this environment. Instead they have become auxiliaries whose
use is restricted to this construction only.
Constraints on the auxiliary. The auxiliary is constrained to match the initial emotion predicate in its aspect feature.
Copala Triqui verbs inflect for aspect via a prefix and shift of tone register. The basic tone register for a verb is its
high register form; it shifts into low register to show potential aspect. 4 A negative particle before the verb also
triggers a shift to the low register form.
In the emphatic auxiliary construction we find that any environment which triggers low register on the initial
1 Many of the predicates (like 'e̱e ̱ rá 'love') which participate in the construction are compounds with the word rá, a particle
meaning something like 'heart, emotional center'.
2
Note that the auxiliaries do not add arguments to the emotion predicates, thus they do not form complex predicates with them
by generally accepted definitions (Butt 1995).
3
The difference appears to be diachronic. The examples with ni'ya̱j come from the 1960s, and those with ne'e from 2012.
4
The rules for deriving the low register from the high register form are detailed in Hollenbach (1984).
Current speakers call the ni'ya̱j versions 'eloquent' but not something that most people would now say.
emotion predicate will trigger a corresponding low register tone on the auxiliary. Thus the ASPECT feature of the
Aux must match the ASPECT feature of the emotion predicate. In (6), the low register form of the auxiliary must be
used because the emotion predicate a'maan rá 'be angry' is in the potential aspect.
6. ... ne̱
nano̱'
ní'
da̱j
qui-'ya̱j
and look for we (incl.) how pot- 'make:LOW
Diose̱ ni ̱'yaj
Diose̱ man ní'
na' ?
God
look':LOW God acc we (incl.) q
ní'
we (incl.)
,
ga̱a ne̱ c-a'ma̱an rá
then
pot be angry:LOW
Are we looking for a way to make God angry at us?
Constraints on the repeated subject. The auxiliary is followed by either 1.) a pronominal repetition of the subject or 2)
a repetition of a proper noun. If the subject of the previous emotion predicate was a pronoun, then the subject of the
auxiliary is an exact repetition (as in 4, 5). If the subject of the emotion predicate is a proper noun (such as Diose̱
'God'), then there may be a pronoun which matches the person and number features of the subject (as in 3) or a
repetition of the proper noun (as in 6).
Transitivity restriction The emphatic auxiliary construction is only found with transitive versions of the emotion
predicates. It is ungrammatical to use it with intransitive versions of the emotion predicates (7) vs (8):
(7)Chumán rá nij so' ni'ya̱j
believe
3PL
look´
nij so' man
3PL
ACC
so'
3sgM
'They believe in him'
(8)Chumán rá nij so'' (*ni'ya̱j nij so')
hate
3PL
look´
3PL
'They believe'
Licensing the construction
To license this construction, I will adopt the conventions of Asudeh, Dalrymple, and Toivonen (2008), who allow PSrules to invoke template call via the @ variable. The template which is relevant here I will call the TRIQUI
EMOTION template. The template call is on the head:
S -->
(V|Adj)
(Part0) NP
Aux
↑=↓
↑=↓
↑=↓
@TRIQ-EMOT(↑PRED FN )
(↑SUBJ)=↓
Det
NP
↓INDEX=↑SUBJ INDEX (↑OBJ)=↓
↓ASP=↑ASP
A verb which invokes this template call will obligatorily use this PS-rule, which must include the auxiliary and the
Det matching the SUBJ index. The ↓ASP=↑ASP specification on the Aux in the rule will ensure that its aspect
always matches that of the main PRED. The Det in the rule does not supply any features to f-structure, but merely
has its INDEX feature checked against the INDEX feature of the SUBJ. 5
The template specifies the semantic contribution of the emphatic auxiliary to the construction. 6 It is worth
mentioning that within this special phrase structure rule, the italicized nodes merely constraint matching information
between the verb and subject without providing any new information. This portion of the rule models the way in
which the Triqui construction parallels tag-like constructions such as English John loves Manchester, he does. While
the English tag is clause final, the Triqui tag is clause-internal, positioned between the SUBJ and OBJ.
5 Note that to interpret this rule correctly, we must interpret the non-parenthesized portions as obligatory, contra the idea that all
nodes in PS-rules are optional (Bresnan 2001). V|Adj is optional, since it is often realized in a higher functional head (as in
Swedish, cf. Sells 2001).
6
The template calls in Asudeh, Dalrymple, and Toivonen (2008) also have the effect of altering the subcategorization, but that
effect is not seen in the Triqui data.